Jigawa expends N7bn on education ―Commissioner

THE Jigawa‎ State government ‎has expended over N7billion on the payment of NECO, WAEC and additional structures such as new classrooms and renovation of old ones, laboratories, school libraries in the last two years.

This was disclosed by the state Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology Hajiya Rabi Ishaq while speaking to newsmen in Dutse, said when they took over the state in 2015 they found the education sector in shambles, characterized by poor quality teaching, dilapidated classrooms, lack of learning materials, teachers.

Ishaq noted, this bad condition of the state’s education manifested or translated in to mass failure in the students’ final exam particularly NECO and WASSCE where only below 16 per cent ‎scored five credit and above.

She said, after discovering the challenges, the government organised a town hall meeting at different zones in the state to address the challenges and design a better way forward.

She added that, irked by the situation, the Governor Badaru-led administration through her ministry came up with “change agenda” ‎which aims at improving the quality of the learning outcome from primary to secondary.‎

‎”According to her some of the measures taken to revitalise the sector include recruitment of over 4,000 National Youth Service Corps members, 3,000 teachers from N-Power, and 1,500 permanent teachers to address the vacuum.”

Hajiya Rabi also said, government also spent huge amount for the renovation and construction of hundreds of classrooms and other structures in the schools across all the 27 local government areas of the state.

“As a result of the measure our current statistic on student examination shows improvement to about 26 per cent of the students who passed their NECO/WAEC with five credits and above.”

She then, called on the people in the state to continue support to the APC administration for a better Jigawa state in a near future.